Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Shift From Financial Equity to Customer Equity

This financial crisis can't help growing, and has affected European's Markets. Some Belgian banks are nationalized, somehow the same way AIG has been saved. We can see that during crisis times, the liberal doctrine has to stay aside...

Now Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, has said that the financal markets will never be allowed to work the way they used to, because they have shown the system had problems. I don't think it is right. I believe this is a part of capitalism, the risk you take when you invest somewhere. There will always be some crisis, no matter how much rules you can establish to prevent them. However, when a crisis occurs, some new concepts and trends emerge, and that is what is great about it.

I have already talked last week about how this crisis could help the growth of sustainable development based businesses, by a lowering interests of investors in traditional financial institutions that have failed to show their strength during this crisis. I also believe that the equity of businesses should not only be due to the market shares growth expectations, but more based on operational results.

Do you know any companies that have no customers? The purpose of a company is to respond to a demand, and hence, to some customers. A company's stability is based on its customer portfolio. However, this is not much considered as a criteria to evaluate a company's market share value.

Most of financial institutions that are in trouble right now had millions of assets on steroids due to high speculative approaches.

On a customer equity based system, your company's equity is based on your customer, on their ability to generate business. Even during crisis like right now, your customers might lower their consumption, but they will still stick with you, allowing you to go through the crisis with minimum arms.


What do you think about this idea?